Guitars, Gold and God.

Deb and I have been really challenged recently about stewardship, finances and materialism. Deb is much better at just getting on with it than I am. I kidded myself for years that I wasn't materialistic until God opened the shutters and let the light in. My biggest weakness was guitars. It's very easy to justify spending money on them when you play for a living. Late last year I started to hear a trickle of God's voice which then turned into a torrent. I felt like he said, stop shopping for guitars and start playing the ones you got! I spent so much time on Ebay buying and selling, changing and swapping that I was using up all that precious resource of time and only playing when I was teaching or leading on a Sunday. I realised that what I was looking for was as much a status symbol as the kid who buys an expensive pair of trainers in order to fit in.

To cut a long story short I now take the mantra of the Sheryl Crow line which says, "It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you got."

The Lord really blessed me with two great guitars, the Gibson Les Paul Faded DC that I mentioned in a previous post and a special Taylor 310 that I got for my 30th birthay a few years ago. I sold the others off. I realised that I was hindereing the Lord's chance to bless me or restrain me by going it alone and just spending money without consulting him. So everyday, just like we do before dinner, I thank God for the great gear he's already given me. The hardest bit is trusting that God really knows what he's doing, but thankfully he shows me tokens of that everyday.

My prayer this week, " Lord, show me what I need in order to serve you, not what I want to show off."